About Us
Mission
Children don’t easily share their toys. Nor do journalists: Even within newsrooms, some reporters jealously guard reporting tools that help them land stories on page one.
Children haven’t changed much. But journalism, in a decade, could not have changed more. News organizations have far fewer resources. Demanding editors expect reporters to become more resourceful.
The Initiative for Investigative Reporting and our website, Watchdog New England, want to help.
The Initiative has a three-fold mission:
- First, we have created partnerships with community news organizations to assist them in watchdog and investigative reporting that helps excavate the truth behind important issues and holds public and non-profit agencies and their leaders accountable.
- Second, we are putting reporters and editors across New England within a mouse click of hundreds of databases that can help overcome reporting hurdles and add depth and context to breaking news stories.
- Third, our website will be a destination for reporters: We’ll post and blog about the best reporting in the region, produce regular podcasts about reporting techniques and host periodic workshops.
Behind the Story
The Initiative for Investigative Reporting, a part of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University, is one of dozens of non-profit investigative reporting ventures that have sprung up across the country in the last few years, as adverse economic conditions have made it difficult for traditional news organizations to do watchdog and investigative reporting.
Our Initiative and other members of a new national collaborative, the Investigative News Network, are committed to filling that void—to provide a continuing supply of journalistic oxygen necessary to sustain an enlightened public.
The genesis for the Initiative came from an investigative reporting seminar started in the Journalism School in 2007 by Distinguished Professor of Journalism Walter V. Robinson, the former head of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe Spotlight Team. In three years time, students in the seminar have produced 18 page one investigative stories for the Boston Globe.
Now, with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Initiative has expanded that program. We have forged reporting partnerships with two community news organizations, the Dorchester Reporter and Cambridge Day.
Stephen Kurkjian, the Initiative’s Senior Investigative Fellow, is overseeing reporting in collaboration with both partners. Full-time Northeastern journalism coop students and part-time journalism interns are doing much of that reporting. During his career at the Globe, Steve played a principal role in investigations for which the Globe won three Pulitzer Prizes.
In addition to unearthing local stories, through this website we want to be a resource for reporters in every New England state for whom ready access to databases may generate story ideas or provide crucial documentation for important stories that might otherwise not be possible. Already, we’ve posted about 400 databases and informational resources. And we’ll regularly be adding more – all of them free of charge to journalists and citizens alike.
Watchdog New England, however, is not a static site. We will blog regularly about our reporting, about reporting techniques – and about the best reporting in New England. We’ll feature outstanding stories from around the region. We’ve scheduled “how to’’ podcasts with some of New England’s top reporters.
In addition, the Initiative will host periodic investigative reporting workshops that will be open to community news reporters throughout New England – for the minor cost of the lunch we’ll provide.
We’d like to do more than that: If you need assistance with an important story, contact Jesse Nankin, our editor. We’ll do our best to help.
